The Wekiva Parkway (SR 429) is a vital north-south corridor creating the western beltway of the Orlando metropolitan area providing an alternative route from Osceola County to Seminole County to circumvent the oft congested Interstate 4 through downtown Orlando. Located in Lake County, Florida, Section 6 of the Wekiva Parkway is an elevated limited-access highway traversing through the environmentally sensitive areas surrounding the Wekiva River. Designed with the local biodiversity in mind, this stretch of parkway contains several wildlife crossing bridges meant to keep both motorists and animals safe within the river basin allowing wildlife to travel beneath the roadway from the Seminole State Forest to Rock Springs Run State Reserve.

Commissioned by the the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), AtkinsRéalis spearheaded the innovative pilot deployment aimed at detecting, classifying, and tracking wildlife movements along the longest stretch of the Wekiva Parkway's animal under-crossings. With the goal of identifying technology vendors capable of accurately and reliably detecting macro wildlife species, such as white tail deer, coyotes, and black bears, our team created a dynamic test bed to allow for in situ testing of systems in real-world conditions. The overarching objective of the pilot deployment is to select an integrated system to deploy along environmentally sensitive roadways across the district to determine potential vehicle-wildlife collisions and immediately notifying motorists within the vicinity. This will help maintain driver safety, as well as the sensitive biodiversity and Florida ecosystem including threatened and endangered species like the Florida black bear.

Three (3) discrete systems (and counting) have been deployed simultaneously to conduct side-by-side testing and evaluation. Each vendor system utilized proprietary perception software powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to digest and analyze either doppler radar or video feed data streams to positively identify animals within the target range. AtkinsRéalis developed technical criteria to perform unbiased evaluation of each vendor providing objective findings to FDOT including static trail cameras used to verify data reports. Our team performed all infrastructure design, vendor coordination, technical evaluation, system troubleshooting, and stakeholder coordination to deliver the highly sought out pilot project. The findings of this pilot are currently being discussed for further large-scale deployments in conjunction with the the Department, US National Forest Service, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).